Parker Solar Probe Gets Extra Observation Time

After
Parker Solar Probe’s successful first year in space, the mission team
has decided to extend science observations as the spacecraft approaches
its third solar encounter.

Parker Solar Probe turned on its four instrument suites
on Aug. 16, 2019 — earlier than during its previous two solar
encounters, extending the observation period from 11 days to about 35
days.

During the spacecraft’s first two solar encounters, the science
instruments were turned on when Parker was about 0.25 AU from the Sun
and powered off again at the same distance on the outbound side of the
orbit. (One AU, or astronomical unit, is about 93 million miles, the
average distance between the Sun and Earth.) For this third solar
encounter, the mission team turned on the instruments when the
spacecraft was around 0.45 AU from the Sun on the inbound side of its
orbit and will turn them off when the spacecraft is about 0.5 AU from
the Sun on the outbound side.

“We’ve seen very intriguing phenomena below 0.25 AU, and are
confident we will see interesting things all the way out to 0.5
AU,” said Nour Raouafi, Parker Solar Probe project scientist at the
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “We cannot
wait to see how this extended campaign data will compare to our
previous data collected during the shorter periods and to the data from
previous missions, such as Helios.”

The extended observation time before and after Parker Solar Probe’s
perihelion — its closest approach to the Sun during a given orbit — will
let scientists capture the evolution of the solar wind over greater
distances as it travels away from the Sun. They also hope the additional
data will yield more insight into the energetic particles surrounding
the Sun, the corona and the overall solar environment.

The data gathered during this period will start downlinking
immediately at the end of the extended campaign. The data from the first
two encounters will be released to the public in 2019. Parker Solar
Probe’s third perihelionwill occur on Sept. 1.

This image from Parker Solar Probe’s WISPR (Wide-field Imager for Solar Probe) instrument shows a coronal streamer, seen over the east limb of the Sun on Nov. 8, 2018, at 1:12 a.m. EST. Parker Solar Probe was about 16.9 million miles from the Sun’s surface when this image was taken. The bright object near the center of the image is Mercury, and the dark spots are a result of background correction.Credit: NASA/Naval Research Laboratory/Parker Solar Probe High-Res Image